Social Media

Busuu Wants to be Your Language Gardener

Busuu is a language learning community that launched in March of this year. They currently offer online courses for four languages: English, Spanish, French and German. While they're in Beta everything is free. Eventually, though, there will also be premium memberships.

Cultivating Your Language GardenBusuu utilizes a unique visual concept for helping you learn new languages. They call it the language garden where trees represent the level of your language expertise. For example, here's an image of the language garden with different trees and objects all representing the member's level of accomplishments. Besides the trees there are other indicators called units that reward members whenever they complete a task or course.

Hearing is Believing and LearningThe cornerstone of all Busuu courses is the pervasive use of audio playback of words and sentences. Being able to replay the word or phrases repeatedly is a valuable tool when it comes to learning another language.

Live Interactions with Other GardenersOne of the best things about this language service is its community, which actually encourages its members to assist other members. The primary method for this interaction is via live one on one chat lessons which they call Busuu-Talk. You add friends just as you do on other social networks and their status indicator tells you when they're online or offline. It's easy to see what languages everyone already know and which ones everyone is learning. Thus, every student can be also be a teacher.

ConclusionBusuu has come up with yet another interesting way to help people learn new languages. While the concept is a little strange at first, you slowly begin to dig the idea of growing your knowledge as well as your trees. It's also a good idea to allow members to help one another learn each other's languages right there on the site. Right now, they only teach four languages but look for more to come soon.

Note: According to an ethnological study conducted in the Eighties, Busuu is a language spoken in Cameroon where approximately only eight people are able to speak this language.

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